Sens. Carl Levin and Kirsten Gillibrand escalated their fight Wednesday over how Congress should respond to military sexual assault.

Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, released two letters from senior military officials supporting his argument that the Pentagon should maintain its current justice system for prosecuting sexual assault cases within the chain of command.

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Republicans stand with Gillibrand

Gillibrand quickly pounced, questioning the credibility of the Defense Department letters. The New York Democrat is picking up momentum on an alternative plan that overhauls how the Defense Department would prosecute major military crimes. On Wednesday Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, became the eighth GOP senator to back her proposal, while Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) also signed on.

The two Democrats are fighting for votes ahead of a showdown expected after the August recess, when Gillibrand plans to offer an amendment to the defense authorization bill — widely opposed by the Pentagon and Democratic and GOP hawks — that would set up a new independent legal channel to prosecute sexual assaults and other major crimes.

And the Democrats’ differences over how to address sexual assault have also swept up Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), the senior Armed Services Committee member who has been championing Levin’s alternative approach that includes more than two dozen other provisions designed to address the issue.

Protect our Defenders, a group representing sexual assault victims that’s aligned with Gillibrand, ran a half-page ad Tuesday in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch describing McCaskill as an obstacle to meaningful reforms to reduce crimes within the ranks.

The ad, an open letter from Terri Odom, a St. Louis-area Navy veteran who said she was raped in 1986 while serving in Italy, urged McCaskill to reconsider her opposition to Gillibrand’s efforts to remove the chain of command.

“Without your support, perpetrators may continue to go free; victims will be too afraid to come forward; and our military readiness will suffer,” Odom wrote. Protect our Defenders is also running ads on Facebook and a social media campaign — “Where’s Claire?” — pushing the Democrat to reverse positions.

McCaskill, a former county prosecutor, told the Post-Dispatch in a front-page story published Wednesday that she was “stunned” by the attack ad given her work with Levin on multiple provisions to address military sexual assault.

“I would never be advocating for this if I didn’t believe with every fiber of my being that this would be more protective of victims and result in more and better prosecutions,” she told the newspaper, citing provisions that strip commanders of the ability to overturn jury convictions and making it a crime to retaliate against victims who speak up about a sexual assault.

Levin’s challenge to the Gillibrand amendment centered on two letters supporting the current prosecution system that he got Tuesday from Navy Adm. James Winnefeld, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Brig. Gen. Richard Gross, legal counsel to Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.

Winnefeld’s letter cited data showing 93 cases over the last two years where commanders from the four military branches exercised jurisdiction in cases local civilian authorities declined to pursue.

“I believe these statistics demonstrate the personal ownership commanders take in the discipline of their units — even in the face of often challenging circumstances,” Winnefeld wrote.